This speech was delivered at the close of the Republican State Convention,
in the Hall of the House of Representatives. Though the "house divided"
phrase had been used frequently before, it was this speech of Lincoln's
that gave currency nd familiarity to the phrase and the idea. For an analysis
of the speech and a description of the setting, see A. Beveridge, Abraham
Lincoln, Vol. II, p. 575 ff.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: If we could first know
where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to
do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy
was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an
end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation
has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it
will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A
house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect
it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the
course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till
it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North
as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete
legal combination -- piece of machinery, so to speak— compounded of the
Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only
what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also
let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or
rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of
action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the
States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National territory
by Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which
ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the
National territory to slavery, and was the first point gained....

While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case, involving
the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily
taken him first into a free State, and then into a territory covered by
the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time
in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District
of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision
in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred Scott,"
which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before
the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued
in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was
deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator
Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of
the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory
can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter
answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such
as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. . . . The Presidential
inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming
President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide
by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days,
came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make
a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently
denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early
occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision,
and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained!

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author
of the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton
Constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of Kansas;
and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote
for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or
voted apt I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up to be intended by him other than as an
apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind....
That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine.
Under the Dred Scott decision "squatter sovereignty" squatted
out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding; like the mould
at the foundry, served through one blast, and fell back into loose sand;
helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late
joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution,
involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made
on a point -- the right of a people to make their own constitution -- upon
which he and the Republicans have never differed.

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator
Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery,
in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The
working points of that machinery are:

Firstly, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant
of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that
term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made
in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit
of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that
"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States."

Secondly, That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States,"
neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from
any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual
men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them
as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution
through all the future.

Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free
State makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will
not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State
the negro mav be forced into by the master. This point is made. not to
be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently
indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion
that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the
free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other
one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska
doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion,
at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted
down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also,
whither we are tending....

Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people,
voted down? Plainly enough now,—the adoption of it would have spoiled the
niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up?
Why even a Senator’s individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential
election? Plainly enough now,—the speaking out then would have damaged
the "perfectly free" argument upon which the election was to
be carried. Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement?
Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation
in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and
petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded
that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement
of the decision by the President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result
of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions
of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and
by different workmen,—Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance,—and
when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the
frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting,
and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted
to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few,—not omitting
even scaffolding,—or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in
the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in,—in such
a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin
and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and
all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was
struck....